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It is no secret that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been vocal of the idea of Sovereign AI. Which is the idea that nations must develop their own AI infrastructure to safeguard data, privacy, and autonomy.
In this regard, Huang recently announced new collaborations and initiatives to increase Europe’s computing capacity and lessen reliance on cloud giants based in the United States during a trip of London, Paris, and Berlin.
Sovereign AI Spawns Data Centre Boom
Massive investments in artificial intelligence farms and “gigafactories” have been sparked by this drive. In France, the firm Mistral is collaborating with Nvidia to implement 18,000 Blackwell GPUs in a data center located in the Paris region.
Germany is constructing the continent’s inaugural industrial AI cloud, equipped with 10,000 GPUs. In the United Kingdom, cloud companies Nebius and Nscale intend to install more than 14,000 GPUs in new data centres. The EU has allocated €20 billion to fund four large AI data centers under its InvestAI initiative.
These projects seek to bridge Europe’s disparity with U.S. and Chinese AI infrastructure, tackling both capacity deficiencies and apprehensions regarding geopolitical dominance.
Sovereign AI Will Partner With Perplexity and Scaleway
Nvidia’s reach extends beyond hardware. It has partnered with Perplexity to develop sovereign AI models tailored to Europe’s 24 official languages.
Collaborations with regional telecoms (Orange, Swisscom, Telenor) and cloud provider Scaleway are also underway. These deals include access to Nvidia’s AI Enterprise software and large GPU clusters via DGX Cloud Lepton.
Challenges and Autonomy Debates
While the surge in AI investment is hailed as a strategic win, skeptics warn of lingering dependencies. Critics question whether relying on U.S.-made GPUs truly delivers sovereignty. In order for Europe to truly embrace sovereignty,” is there also a need for home ground chip production? Questions like these do not have any tangible answers as of yet.
Energy costs, planning delays, and regulatory issues also pose risks. Despite those concerns, the momentum is clear: Europe is intent on building a competitive and independent AI ecosystem with Nvidia at its core.
